


No Stranger (To This Heartbreak)

by porkcutletbow



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Banana fish still hurts, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Gen, Grief/Mourning, One Shot, Oops, my bad - Freeform, my hand slipped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:41:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23483269
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/porkcutletbow/pseuds/porkcutletbow
Summary: Grief is such a visceral thing
Comments: 2
Kudos: 15





	No Stranger (To This Heartbreak)

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go.
> 
> Thank yout to my beta for making sure this wasn't a trainwreck!

Grief is such a visceral thing.

It’s unpredictable and unrestricted. How everyone deals with it varies.

In truth, when Eiji agreed to hop on a plane headed to America to help Ibe-san with his article almost a year ago, he never expected to miss it. New York is such a messy city, full of intimidating buildings and even more intimidating people. In the city center, the lights are always on and they’re always too bright. The subway is always crowded, people bump into each other only to get through and they never, ever apologize.

No one ever apologizes in New York. 

The city is dirty and polluted and filled to the brim with people who live their lives like theirs are the only ones that matter. But even then, Eiji still misses it to absolute pieces. That’s the thing about loving something for what it is,; even when everything about said thing is out there for the taking, when that thing has done absolutely nothing to hide what it is made of; –flaws and mistakes included–, then the love you hold for it can only be true. And that’s the love that truly hurts when it’s taken away. 

Because there is a huge difference between  _ ‘loving’ _ something or someone like a prized possession instead of for who they truly are. One is loving someone like a beggar ‘loves’ money, like a dragon ‘loves’ gold, like Yut Lung ‘loved’ his brothers, like Golzine ‘loved’ Ash; loving something or someone as nothing more than an asset. The other is simply loving someone for what they’ve proven to be, instead of trying to constantly change them. Loving someone like a human.

Maybe there is a common misunderstanding amongst the people of New York? Maybe they all live the same, thinking that loving someone like you love some _ thing _ is the same as loving them like they’re a person.

Is Eiji even really talking about New York at this point? It’s hard to tell.

The point is that, throughout his life, Eiji has lost many things. He lost his dog when he was little. Eiji had cried desolately for three days after, he had felt sad every time he had seen Buddy’s leash or his favorite ball. The days went by and he eventually learned that some things weren’t meant to last forever. He cherished his memories with his pet and was able to move past it. 

The next big loss had been Eiji’s pole vaulting career, how it ended with a crack to his ankle. He took the news from the doctors resolutely and without a word. After that, Eiji went quiet for a while. He’d taken to hiding in the shadows outside the field and watching the rest of his team at practice, taking the leaps Eiji would never be able to take again. Grief had burnt a little more latent under his skin then, but it was more of a quiet mourning than anything else, a blatant hole where something important used to be. 

From that, after thinking there wasn’t possibly anything else he could lose that would hurt so miserably, he made it to New York and watched Shorter Wong get shot through the heart. Eiji could still see Shorter’s broken expression every time he closed his eyes, he could still smell the blood,  _ his friend’s blood _ , all over him: on his hands, on his chest, his face. Eiji and Shorter became friends the second they spoke to each other, Shorter’s easygoing nature contrasted Eiji’s overall awkwardness. From the beginning, the Chinese boy had taken to protecting Eiji and firing the gun when he couldn’t. Shorter had laughed, and joked, and ruffled Eiji’s hair like they’d known each other their whole lives, and Eiji wished they’d had. But, in a blink, Shorter was gone. Banana Fish altered the chemicals in his brain until it hurt him to even breathe. Shorter, with his ridiculous purple hair, his dumb piercing in his eyebrow, and the stupid sunglasses he always wore. All that and then he was gone like he was never there to begin with.  _ That…  _ Eiji had taken it hard. Ash had tiptoed around the subject, always, equally as affected but far better at dissimulating his own grief. Shorter didn’t even get to see his sister again.

After that, Eiji’s heart never really found the way to piece itself back together. But Shorter would have never wanted neither him nor Ash to spend their lives missing him, that was just the type of carefree guy he was. But Eiji never truly forgot how to stop hurting from that.

New York never really looked the same without Shorter’s smile.

Eventually, Eiji would lose New York too. He would finally be put on a plane back to Japan, condemned to face his newly acquired trauma by himself and being stuck trying to pretend like his family would understand. They never would, of course, because Eiji would never tell them the truth. They’d never believe him. But while he had it, he spent every second engraving the city’s skyline into his memory.

In the city that never sleeps, one after another, the days blurred to weeks and the weeks to months, and Eiji had to actively make himself remember that he was still a visitor. He was merely temporary in a timeline where guns and fights are the norm. A nuisance that has no idea how to fend for itself in a world where it was either kill or be killed. Eiji didn’t know how to handle himself, he flinched at the sound of a gunshot, he frantically struggled against the ropes that tried to bind him. He wouldn't last a day out there. He thought he was getting in the way more often than not, that he was just a burden, an obstacle in the way of the grand scheme of things, of the liberation plot the gangs were trying to pull. But that never really mattered. Ash told him it didn’t. 

But what does it matter what Ash said, what Ash wanted? Because, after  _ everything _ , Ash was gone too.

Now,  _ those _ news had Eiji doubling over in absolute pain.

It had been sudden and unexpected and it was the first time Eiji had taken a blow so hard. Nothing had ever been more painful; not the loss of Buddy, his career, or even Shorter. Eiji had seen Ash once before he left,; Ash had been crying and saying goodbye. Then Eiji was taken to the airport, looking everywhere for tufts of blonde hair or the flash of green eyes, but he knew in his heart Ash wasn’t coming. Not because he didn’t want to, but because he totally did and he knew people were still chasing him. Eiji wanted nothing more than to see Ash free, but really, what power could someone like him have over that? None. So Eiji could only hope that Sing had delivered his letter, that Ash had wanted to read it, and that, eventually, they’d meet again. Eiji would be back. Or so he thought. That was before the news. Maybe, after hearing about Ash… maybe Eiji wouldn’t be able to go back without dying in the process.

The moment he landed in Tokyo from New York, Ibe-san had exactly eleven missed calls from Max. The second Eiji saw them was the second fear closed around his throat, and he panicked. He could tell something was wrong. But Ibe-san decided to wait until they were on the train to Izumo to call back. He knew something was wrong too.

He told Eiji later, that he had never been more sad about being right in his entire life. 

Ibe-san called Max back once at the station, sparing worrying glances at Eiji as he spoke, just like when he had first ended up in the hospital after he broke his ankle. Eiji hates that look of pity. His head is spinning too fast and he can faintly hear Max’s frantic talking above the roaring in his ears. Eiji doesn’t need to hear the words to know that  _ something _ has happened over in New York. Already? So soon?

Max says something over the phone and Ibe-san pales so fast Eiji thinks he might pass out. Without hesitation, Eiji takes the phone from Ibe-san, who is still too shocked to fight it, and demands Max to tell him what’s wrong. 

And, well, if Eiji’s heart was broken after Shorter, then it sure was shattered after Ash. Right, Eiji had lost many things throughout his lifetime, but none had ever threatened to kill him too. “Max, what is it?”

“Eiji?” Max asks and then sighs, “Look, kid, I really don’t know how to tell you this…”

The phone shakes in Eiji’s hands. “What? Max, is everything alright? Is Ash alright? God, please tell me he is.”

Eiji knew this was about Ash. It had to be. “Kid…”

“Max, please. Just… tell me the truth.”

So, with a heavy sigh, Max did. And God, Eiji had never felt the instant snap of his heart into pieces, but now he knew what it felt like. And it freaking hurt. 

It was about Ash, of course it was. Ash wasn’t okay. Ash wasn’t safe. Heck, Ash wasn’t even  _ alive _ . Eiji heard that loud and clear.

Ash had been running. Ash had been reading Eiji’s letter. Ash had been trying to catch up to him, to make it to the airport and actually make use of the ticket Eiji had gifted him. Ash was going to run away. Ash was coming to Eiji. Ash had been distracted. Ash had let his guard down. Ash had been stabbed by Lao. Ash, that  _ moron _ , had gone to the library instead of a damned hospital and had fooled the lady working there into thinking he was sleeping. Ash hadn’t woken up after an hour. Ash bled out seated in his favorite chair, over Eiji’s letter. Ash had died. Ash had died with Eiji’s words pressed to his cheek, covered in his blood. Ash Lynx, Ash, Aslan Callenreese, was  _ dead _ . 

After everything? After Dino, after Foxx, after being raped, abused, stabbed, shot at, kidnapped, beaten, tortured. Ash had just… willingly let himself bleed out in a library? After  _ everything _ this damned world had put Ash through… it was  _ Lao _ , of all people, to take him? No. No. Ash would never allow that. Sing would never allow that. Cain. Alex. Bones. Kong. They’d never ever allow that. 

“No,” is the first thing that Eiji can think to say when Max tells him. Feeling threatens to drown him, “No. Ash’s not dead. He’s not. He’s Ash. He never lets his guard down. My letter couldn’t have distracted him, not nearly enough as to provoke this. Lao, that snake, he is no match for— for,  _ my _ Ash. He’s  _ not _ dead.”

Ibe-san must sense his distress because he catches Eiji before he can fall over with how hard his knees buckle. Ash isn’t dead, he’s not. Less than 24 hours ago, Eiji saw him at the hospital. Living, breathing, hurting, but  _ alive _ . Eiji just starts sobbing into the speaker and telling Max to stop lying, that his joke isn’t funny. Eiji demands to speak to Ash, just to hear his voice, even if it’s miles and miles away. Ash would fondly call him a crybaby, he’d laugh and tell him he’s alright, that he’s been through worse. But that never comes. Max just shushes Eiji gently and keeps on apologizing for leaving Ash alone after everything, that he should have stopped him. Eiji agrees, but he just cries harder. Max just sobs with him.

After that, well… after that, Eiji truly forgets how to put  _ himself _ back together. 

He makes it home with tear-stained cheeks and a broken heart and when his parents ask him about New York, he starts crying again. They don’t understand why, they ask him if he's okay, they ask him what’s wrong, and Eiji wants to tell them. He wants to tell them about New York, about all the people he met, all the things he saw, good and bad. He wants to tell them about Ash, but he can do nothing but cry. He cries so inconsolably that they start freaking out and urgently asking what’s wrong. T, they ask him to breathe. Eiji never truly could after this.

He fell quiet again. He went back to school, and, in his sadness, he accidentally chased down a grand total of three boys with blonde hair; strangers in the street, in the hope that at least one of them would turn around and reveal to be someone Eiji would never see again. 

Max called in every single day to check up on Eiji. They wouldn’t speak about the subject, they’d dance around it without ever actually saying the words. Max would talk to him about New York, about Jessica, about Michael, about how he misses Eiji’s broken English. That was most days. Others, Eiji and Max would just suffer together. They’d curse Banana Fish, scream about how it ruins lives, whether it’s administered or not. Max would rant on about how the police are doing absolutely nothing to put a stop to the bleeding in the streets. Eiji would only cry about the fact that Ash wouldn’t even get a proper burial, no one would sing a requiem for some unfortunate kid who was raised in the streets. How people wouldn’t mourn a day while Eiji would mourn the rest of his life. Max promises him otherwise. 

Eiji promises to be back soon. 

Days go by and Eiji can’t stop thinking about Ash. He retells the story Max told him about the day Ash died in his head, but there was something that stuck out to Eiji, something that didn’t add up. Max said Ash killed Lao after he was stabbed, but… then Ash had deliberately limped to the library, he had purposefully stumbled to his favorite building to rest instead of calling for help. Had… had Ash died… on  _ purpose?  _

No, no, no. He couldn’t have. An Ash that just took what he was given, especially…  _ death _ , wasn’t an Ash that Eiji could reconcile in his head. An Ash that didn’t question the circumstances, that didn’t defy them with everything he had in him, yeah, that’s not the Ash he knew. That or maybe… Maybe Eiji never truly knew Ash as well as he thought he did. He hoped he was wrong on that.

If Ash simply accepted his fate without a hint of a fight or hesitation there had to be some reasoning behind it. There had to be. But… Oh! New York would be safer, yes? That’s what Ash always said, maybe that’s why he did it. Sure, that’s valid, because whether he knew it or not, Ash always prioritized the happiness of others rather than his own. He was always rambling on about how the streets would settle once he was gone, because no one would fight him for control and people would stop tripping over each other to try and kill him. Because, when the villains fall, the kingdom never weeps, right? They shouldn’t. The threat is eliminated. But, is it really? Eiji always scolded him for thinking and talking like that, like his life wasn’t worth anything. Ash would have laughed it off. Eiji misses Ash’s laugh.

Ugh, how is it possible to lose something he never even had to begin with? 

Eiji knows, he  _ knows,  _ that what he has lost is nothing compared to all Ash went through, all he was forced to hold on his shoulders but… just because Eiji was gifted with better circumstances, with a better life, that didn’t mean he couldn't break too. It doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. 

And hurt it does. 

Eiji doesn’t really know how he became friends with Ash in the first place, he doesn’t understand what kind of stars had to align for them to meet. But, he’s glad they did. Yet… does it matter, in the end? The point is that, even with everything going against them, they became friends and they understood that they had each other to lean on. That’s truly the only thing that mattered. They were going to take down Golzine, the Corsican mafia and blow the lid off of the whole of the Banana Fish scandal once and for all. They were going to do it together. But now? Max told Eiji everything, about how Golzine shot Foxx and fell to the fire. About how Sing was forced to let go of the suitcase containing everything on the drug in order to save himself. About how Blanca joined the cause. About how Ash had died for it.

Sing started calling too, weekly, and he told Eiji about how much they were struggling not only in Chinatown, but everywhere in Manhattan. How, without Ash, downtown New York was up for the taking; people were no longer afraid of demanding control over it. How the area was crumbling to pieces and people were fighting each other like animals for control of the territory, now that the lynx was out of the way. And where was Eiji for all of that? Right, either laying uselessly on a hospital bed or back in Japan where he couldn’t fight back. Of course. Typical. No wonder Yut Lung had told Eiji he was useless. What happened to Ash the second Eiji hopped on a plane was proof enough that he absolutely was.

Everything they’d worked for,  _ everything  _ they had fought for, was coming undone right before Eiji’s eyes, even an entire ocean away. And there was nothing he could do about it. 

If anyone was supposed to make it out of this war alive, it was Ash. And now, he’s the only one who didn’t.

How cruel is the fate that binds some people.

Sure, Ash had been a murderer, there was nothing that could erase that. Eiji never truly agreed with the violence at all, but nothing could be done about it, because, what other choice had Ash had? And, sure, tons of people in the gangs had been through something similar, they’d been through horrible things but none had ever handled it like Ash. Perhaps it was an insensitive assumption, Eiji knew the guys’ stories and they were all terrible. But clouded by grief, he couldn’t make himself regret thinking that Ash had always been the strongest. He’d been through the worst and, even then, after all his battles and the bullets, Ash  _ never _ let the streets turn him into something he wasn’t. 

How is that fair? That people like Yut Lung, whose hearts have been corrupted past the point of salvation, people who destroy only because they can, the people who have never once looked over their shoulders to look at all the lives they’ve ruined –Eiji’s included– are still here. Why isn’t Ash? It’s not fair. Of course, if Eiji had his way, no one would die at all. But, if someone had to, why Ash? All the boy ever tried to do was do good, to counteract all the evil he’d been forced to make; to somehow fight against what tried to make him into something ruthless, into what he never wanted to be and everything he swore to destroy. His whole life, Ash was forced to fight and, even then, he’d  _ lost? _ That’s not fair.

But, in truth, New York, the people he met there, taught him that the good people —those who have seen or done terrible things, yet are still fighting to make things right— don’t always win. And hadn’t  _ that  _ been a hard pill to swallow. 

If Ash Lynx of all people couldn't make it out in this world, how could Eiji? Especially without the other boy? If someone as unapologetically himself like Ash, loudmouthed, insolent, arrogant, stupid, untamed, unafraid, unrivaled, caring, proud, brave,  _ free _ Ash, couldn’t survive, what chance did someone like Eiji have? Plain, afraid, unable. 

He’s gone. He’s gone, he’s gone, he’s gone—truly, what good had Eiji done by Ash by not following through with the promise of seeing him off the streets, out of Golzine’s claws and on to Japan with him? What had Eiji done to prevent Ash from running face first into his fate? Because that’s what death had been, Ash’s ultimate destination. Honestly, with Ash leading the life he led, it was surprising that death hadn’t taken him before this, a disturbing thought all on its own. Now, destiny had caught up to the wild lynx, Eiji had done nothing to make things happen differently, and the matter was a hundred times worse.

He’d failed Ash. Ash, who had been cornered in every street but still always found a way to get away. Ash, who had seen everything; terrible, gruesome things and still managed to keep his heart somewhat intact. Ash, who had  _ known  _ Eiji could do nothing to protect himself on the barbaric streets of New York and still let the boy stay; Ash even swore on protecting him. Ash, Aslan, who had promised Eiji everything when, truly, the world had made it so that Ash could barely offer him the truth most of the time. But it doesn’t matter. Because the world had brought Ash into this mess in the first place, and it had been the world who had taken him too, in the end. 

In a twisted sense, Ash ended up unfairly becoming the Macbeth of this tragedy, even when he had always been more of a McDuff than anything else. He’d been casted out and chased all the way to Dunsinane, murdered by a ravenous soldier who seeked nothing but revenge for his family. That or something other out of all the pretentious literature Ash told Eiji about all the time.

How miserable, how painfully ironic, that Eiji had done all this talking to Ash about how he could change his fate, how he could outrun the past and, still, this had been the outcome. Eiji had pushed the subject, he had made pointed emphasis on reminding Ash that nothing was written in stone but… wasn’t it? If Eiji had been right about any of it, Ash would be here, in Japan, next to him. Ash would be alive. But he wasn’t and he’s not. It was all  _ but, maybe, if.  _ Nothing was ever or had ever been certain with Ash Lynx, and this was no exception.

Maybe that’s why this had hurt so much, why it still does. Because even with the uncertainty, there had always been a chance. A chance for Ash to make it out of the war, 

for Ash to finally walk away from the guns and the gangs and the death, for him to lead a normal life. For him to  _ live  _ at all.

Eiji had been sure that Ash could run away with him, that he could fix what was never meant to be broken inside the boy in the first place. That they were meant to find each other, that they had been fated to come together and to stay that way. But Ash was gone, and with him, Eiji’s heart. He never even got to say a proper goodbye, and now he never would. 

Eiji has lost many things in his lifetime and none had ever been as painful as this.

Eiji’s letter was now the only thing that might have let his friend know his true intentions to stay, that might have conveyed to Ash that, wherever he went, Eiji would follow. Eiji could only hope Ash got the chance to read it, hope that he had understood.

In truth, all Eiji had done since the beginning was hope. He had hoped and hoped and hoped that everything would happen like it should, that things would turn out right. He could only  _ hope  _ that Hemingway’s leopard could make it down the frozen mountain without dying in the process. That Ash got the chance he deserved at a normal life. That he could grab Ash by the cuff of his jacket and pull him back before the flames that threatened to consume him could touch him. That Eiji could talk him into running to hide with him in Japan and that he could demand him to  _ stay _ . Eiji had hoped he could change Ash’s destiny like Ash himself never could.

Turns out, sometimes, hoping isn’t enough.


End file.
